


saturation

by WritingOnTheWalls



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Colours, F/F, F/M, Hope, M/M, Rambling, What's a dialogue?, love and other junk, rainbow redemption fic, slight mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 04:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20269966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOnTheWalls/pseuds/WritingOnTheWalls
Summary: colour is a power which directly influences the soul.





	saturation

His colour was always blue. 'Like the ocean', he said, when Sammy would ask. 'Like your eyes,' he thought, but never would say.

Blue was simple, calm and serene. If he were being honest, anything that made him feel steady was a good thing. There were days where he didn't – feel steady, that is. When he felt like the whole world would come crashing down around him (and maybe a tidal wave of blue or two) and he was crippled with the fear that he would wake up and find himself trapped within the darkness. There was no blue in the darkness, in The Void. (Until there was.)

In those moments, he felt like the blue was sadness, and the blue was loss. Because even something so beautiful and wonderful as blue could be fractured by the dark.

But mostly, blue made him think of sandcastles and laughter, and summers that felt like they would never end. Blue was Lily and Sammy and all the moments before, with what seemed like not a care in the world. Blue was the colour of Sammy’s favourite shirt and whispered conversations over bubblegum ice cream. Blue was the time they'd gone cliff diving into freezing endless depths, and the exuberance he’d felt when breaking the surface. The colour that Lily's favourite candy stained their teeth and tongues. The colour of everything sweet and pure and good in his life.

Blue had no ending, it stretched miles and miles into forever. Blue didn't make him feel trapped, because blue wasn't walls and windows with bars. It wasn't an entrance to The Void, closing him in all too quickly, taking all that was left. Blue wasn't being a second choice or being forgotten or replaced. Blue wasn’t a ‘no’ and an argument, and tears and apologies and never feeling good enough. Blue wasn’t obsession and books and werewolves.    
Blue was endless skies and sea and freedom and Sammy.

Sammy.

If he'd ever had a doubt that anything existed, even his empty, most cynical moments he couldn’t deny Sammy. Sammy was light, and laughter and hope and blue and blue and blue.

He would splash blue upon every canvas he could find, scream blue from the top of every tall building he could scale, and dream of Sammy's lips upon his own. Imagine his pretty wide-eyes opening in shock, and maybe realisation. Maybe he still tasted like blueberries and salt water (but most likely more like snark and peanut butter). He didn't dare hope for anything close to acceptance or love or forgiveness, and so he only imagined. Yet, if he had Sammy in his life still, then he had the blue, and he could work on the rest of it. He would dream of happiness and sea and stars and home. 

The blue had called, and he had come. The tattered blue pages of his notebook were sometimes all he had left. He had endless amounts of darkness, but sometimes he had the blue.

Blue was hope. A promise. And he always kept his promises. No matter what.

* * *

She was small when she decided she wasn't like the other girls. This concerned her, more than anything. Being unique was one thing, sure. However, she wanted to be their friend, she wanted to be like them. She wanted to come from the same town, and like the same music, be just as good at math, and spend her days doing the same monotonous things as all the other girls. She didn't want to feel like the outsider that she was. She’d made friends despite her confidence issues, but they’d all left her when they realised what she really was. Probably hadn’t noticed when she’d disappeared. She’d come back and they didn’t seem to care, of that she was certain. 

The first week was the hardest, because she would wake up crying every day, until she realised it wouldn't make a difference, wouldn’t fix this. She tried hard not to remember, but forgetting was somehow worse. She would never be that person again, never get back to smiles and laughter and everything but the eerie, hollow ache in her chest that told her she wasn’t quite right.

She would hear his name and think yellow. She didn't know what that meant, and didn't care enough to wonder for long. Yellow was a good colour, anyway. It was bright and cheerful and full of life. Like the sun if you looked at it the right way (but not directly, because she valued her eye sight, because she had that if nothing else.)

They laughed at her because she had trouble remembering. Big things, sometimes. She didn't know what her first word was, or how old she was when she learned to ride a bike. They weren't important, exactly, but the holes felt ominous, gaping. Despite what Ben told her, and Sammy and Loretta and whoever else, there was something so wrong about it all. About her.

Sometimes she would forget other things though, big things. Like Ben's birthday, or the holiday they were going to take to somewhere sunny after everything was over, and Jack had been saved. They’d drip off the paintbrush of her mind, and splatter onto the floor, and she wouldn’t even realise until she found the remnants on her clothes the following morning.   
She didn't know why she would forget, or what the variable was that decided whether something would stick. Maybe today it would take her an extra minute to remember how to tie her shoes. Maybe tomorrow Ben would have to call her to shyly remind her of their date at Rose’s. Maybe someday she wouldn't remember any of it, and all she would have and all that would matter would be the yellow the yellow the yellow (and maybe she was okay with that.)

Mostly, Yellow made her think of sunflowers and daydreams, and lazy afternoons teasing Ben with Sammy and Lily. Yellow was giddily wishing on dandelions with Ben, and giggling when he wouldn't stop sneezing with his entire body. Yellow made her think of the bananas that grew in the overgrown backyard of her neighbour's house (Her and her sister would often try to scale the rickety fence to steal them. Any and all injuries were worth it.)

Yellow was afternoons playing dress-ups, and silly arguments over who got to wear the hat with the tattered feather. Yellow was milkshakes with Regan and Maggie and the shirt of the waiter who always flirted with Lily (who was clearly not interested), and yellow was the warmth that spread from (where she supposed was) her heart the first time she'd kissed Ben. Yellow was her favourite dress, and the colour of The Four’s favourite notebook.

Yellow was light, and yellow kept giving. Even when everything else was taking.

Yellow made her feel like she wasn't alone anymore. Like maybe she belonged somewhere, for once.

That was all she'd ever wanted, really.

Yellow was the colour of paperback books, of destinies intertwined. Yellow was a wish, and a smile, and forgiveness. Yellow was clarity in a world filled with uncertainty.

Yellow was a reminder that she wasn't alone. The isolation would chill her bones, make her grind her teeth, and forgo showering for broken sleep and shaky hands. She would slather the walls with the yellow paint, so that even in the hazy hours of morning that she would without a doubt forget, she would remember that this was exactly where she was supposed to be.

* * *

Green had always made him feel right. Perhaps it were a bit on-the-nose for a frog-loving family such as his, but he couldn’t help the sweet pangs of green-coloured nostalgia that clung desperately to his every thought.

Green reminded him of Granny, and his mother and afternoons with Sir Hops-a-Lot in the back garden on the green, green grass, imagining how wonderful the rest of his life would undoubtedly be. Green was growth, and flowers, and beauty, fertility and potential. Green was everything that was, and could be. Green was the first time he saw Emily, and the speckled dress she was wearing felt a little too much like fate. So of course he loved her. She was green, and she was his. 

Still, he felt green when he saw her with Ben, too. Ben had no place here, he never had. Green belonged to him, and him alone. 

Only he could flourish in the green, and so, he would.

* * *

_ You two have the same fucking fire,  _ Sammy had said. About him and Jack, and he wasn’t wrong. He always felt hot, and vile. He felt like if he held on too long to anything, he would turn everything in his grasp to ashes. He burned with passion, an intensity that Betty laughed at, and Emily called ‘sweet.’ He was angry, and broken and hurt, and he vibrated like sunbeams on acid. You can look, but not too long. Don’t reach out and touch, or you’ll get burned.

But red was love, too. It clouded his vision from the first moment he saw her, and suddenly all the other colours felt dull in comparison. He’d acted stupid, jealous, childish. He’d wanted to meld the shades of them together so fiercely, and with such determination that everything else had dropped to the side.

Because she burned too, a little differently, but just as bright. In the sun, her hair had a reddish sheen, but even in her darkest moments she had the kind of ethereal glow that made him want to change the freakin’ world for her, for a chance to get her back and to fill himself up with her red.

And he had.

Wasn't that the best part?

He had changed himself for her. Not in a bad way necessarily, but in a way that bought a weird kind of warmth he happily basked in. He’d seen the broken parts of himself, and his friends, and had changed. Made himself better, polished his potential. He was a work in progress, but getting closer to worthy every day. 

He was a bit of a sap, but they loved that about him anyway. Emily liked it a lot, actually. Better to have a gooey centre than the harsh intensity that made you want to destroy. Better than being the empty husk of a person that he’d been before. Sammy had helped pick up the pieces, Troy and Lily too. They’d glued him back together, a little messily, but still okay, still worth having. Still something wonderful to behold. His overall patience and determination had helped him return as something more, like a phoenix mid-rebirth. Stronger for the hurt. Intense, wanting, burning. Bigger and more beautiful and red, red, red. Suffocating, but in all the best ways.

If he focused, he could remember how badly he had ached, but it was easier to forget now that he didn’t have to. It felt like somebody had sucked out all the colour she’d brought, but he’d managed to bring it back.

Red had been the colour of the fleeting moment he thought Emily wouldn't return in the end. It was the colour that burned through him when anybody left him waiting a little too long at the station. It was the colour of the anger and frustration that tore through him seeing Greg and Emily, and pretending that it were okay, that he were okay. It was also, interestingly enough, how he felt when Sammy murmured ‘I love you’s,’ or slung their arms together casually in the street, or referred to him as ‘brother.’ Red was the colour that stained the overnight oats, which he devoured each morning with gusto, and the contented sighs of everything they'd ever hoped for.

Red was the blood pulsating through his veins. Carrying oxygen (and something that might've been love) around his body, breathing life into his tiny frame. 

Red was the colour he would pick when Bella Jensen offered him her box of crayons. She wouldn't comment on the picture he drew, but he smiled a little to himself at how much the vivid red scribbles on the paper made sense. 

Red was the colour that would paint his cheeks when Emily 'defended his honour' against Lily, and the colour of his favourite too-tight hoodie that looked that much nicer on Emily’s slender frame. It was the flush that would creep up his neck when Emily would wordlessly grab his hand before they were allowed to all the time. It was the colour of all the things left heavy and unsaid between them.

Red was the overwhelming mess of emotions he would feel when he brought himself to admit, once again, that maybe they were more than  _ just friends. _ That maybe he had had a few moments of lapse in judgement and saved her for his own selfish reasons, but why did that matter? Emily was red, and he loved red. He needed red, with every fibre of his being.

Red was the colour he saw every morning, and every night, and the sound of Emily’s laughter as he kissed her awake, and nothing would ever be quite as vibrant as that.

* * *

On his best days, he felt orange.

Coming to King Falls had been difficult undoubtedly, but part of him had held on to the orange. It was the only thing that had kept him going. Kept him from succumbing completely, and it had been so hard not to succumb completely.

(The best days were few and far between.)

Now, most days, he could feel it slipping away.

He tried to be orange, because that was what they expected.

Ben, Troy, Lily. All his other friends. Would they stay away if they knew? If they suspected he wasn't perfect and happy and okay? If they knew how precariously he perched on any semblance of ‘okay.’

He’d stared into The Void, and still returned. But nobody got to leave there feeling whole.

(But Orange was the colour of the pills he took to numb the pain. Orange was the colour of the office where he dutifully tried to put words to the mess that were his emotions. Orange was the colour of his hopes and dreams and security disappearing. Orange was not being good enough. Orange was death and violence and not saving everybody. Orange was the colour of 'goodbyes' that would never be accompanied by future 'hellos.' Orange was never feeling like you were home. Orange was being forgotten, and of memories you yourself couldn't forget no matter how hard you tried.)

So now, he wasn't orange anymore. Or maybe he was, but it was barely a consolation prize any more.

And if he wasn't orange, what could he be?

* * *

She hated purple. It was too predictable, too feminine. Too reminiscent of all the things she hated, of a life she’d left far behind. Pippa had been a fan, although she fought hard not to think about all the reasons why she knew that. 

Her favourite skirt was purple, though. The lipstick she’d ironically (and then unironically) worn most of her teen years. Purple was the colour of half the furniture Jack had insisted on buying for their first apartment together - he claimed it had  _ good vibes, _ but she knew him better than that.    
  


He’d left and the purple furniture had been a museum of all the things she’d lost, a shrine to the person she no longer was, and all the things she’d never be again. (She’d never had the guts to get rid of it though, just in case.) 

Pink was probably her favourite – gender stereotypes aside. Pink made her think of her youth, and everything that was before the fucked up mess that was her life now. Of school and homework and radio internships and afternoons spent driving to nowhere. Of feeling special, and wanted and understood.

Pink was the Before.

Purple was different. Purple was a punctuation. A blending of something that was never a perfect fit. Purple was the After, and she didn't like it.

Purple was the melody of badly written song, of mixed emotions, of confusion. Purple was the colour of the logo for her podcast, and she never wanted to think about that. Purple was the colour of the bruises she’d gotten from the boy who found out a little too late she wasn’t interested. Purple was the sound of the scream that fell from her mouth the moment before she woke up cold and alone and lost. Purple was the panic that followed, and all the breaths that she didn't quite manage to complete. Purple was feeling gawky and awkward, a puzzle piece that wasn't really needed to complete the picture, but came in the box anyway like some sort of cruel joke. Purple would drive you crazy if you weren't careful. Purple was heavy and jagged and wrong.

But Purple was the colour of home, too. Of King Falls, and family. Of new memories, and important discoveries. Of excitement and redemption. Of forgiving herself, and forgiving each other. Purple was the colour of curiosity, of learning and teaching and smiles that didn't go unnoticed. Purple was the colour of the fuzzy socks Sammy had awkwardly presented her when she’d complained about the temperature of their now-shared apartment. Purple was spontaneity, and birthday cakes. Purple was the flash of affection when she thought of Jack and Sammy and the feeling of intense shyness, wary comfort and simple joy she found when she was allowed - implored - hang out with their other friends.

Purple was the colour of what Katie had whispered to her, soft and uncertain and the easy solace that had followed. Purple was knowing who you were supposed to be, and the relief of everything clicking into place.

Purple was the only thing she saw when she looked at her life– and what else did there need to be, really? Because in her old life, love had been pink and red and…

She didn't know how or when it started, but purple was small kisses in the dark, and the feeling of a smile creeping onto Katie’s lips. Purple was love, and love and love. Here and now was all that mattered.

Purple was the After, and the After was good. Purple was good. Purple was everything.

It wasn’t quite so bad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> summary quote is credited to wassily kandinsky. thanks, as always, for reading. :)


End file.
